


Eighteen

by tanarill



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Brotherhood, Coffee, Dessert & Sweets, Detectives, Escapism, Exhaustion, Following, Football | Soccer, Foster Care, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, Loneliness, Love, M/M, Missing Persons, Mystery, Phone Calls & Telephones, Police, Talking, Time Zones, Vacation, ambiguously human, ark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-25
Updated: 2008-06-25
Packaged: 2021-02-07 07:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: It took months, in the end, for the broken clockwork of his life to run down, but inevitably it did.
Relationships: Chris Orcot & Leon Orcot, Count D/Leon Orcot
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Eighteen

Leon Orcot lasted a year and a half.

The first few weeks, he told himself he was _happy_ D was gone. It was, after all, what he had been after for just over two years. He went out clubbing a lot, drank and danced and tried to forget the scent of the pet shop. Murders still went unsolved, but they were at least _believable_. Shootings and stabbings rather than small pets eating half of their owners' bodies.

He came into the office after on th morning after the night before. Jill took one look at him and said, "You look like shit."

"Thanks, Jill," he said, too tired to be aggressive.

Jill gave him a look, which was as incomprehensible as any look that any female ever gave him, and asked, "Would you like some coffee?"

"Thanks," said Leon, curious but not curious enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. Lately he'd given up on drinking his coffee straight and black. It didn't work without something sweet, and he really had no appetite for sweets.

There were a whole rash of cases on his desk, but he knew without looking that today was going to be the kind of day where none of the leads went anywhere. Afterward, he'd go to the pet shop-

No.

Jill came back with his coffee. She watched in silence while he drank the first half, and then nodded that he was ready to go. They took her car; his was too beat-up for the neighborhoods they'd be visiting.

"It's really been hard on you, hasn't it?" she asked.

Leon blinked at the total non sequitur. "What?"

"I mean, even you had to know going into it that getting involved with a known criminal was a bad idea," she said, "but love doesn't really care, does it?"

"_What_?" Leon asked, and, "Love?"

"Oh come on, honey, you don't have to hide it. I saw how you looked at him. We all knew how you felt. Now that he's finally had to cut and run - it must be terrible for you, to have your boyfriend just vanish like that."

Leon, to his surprise, managed to remain calm. "I'm not - he wasn't my boyfriend."

Jill's laughter, which was about as far from the delicate and false tinkles of the society fatales as a river was from a stream. "Leon, your brother lived with him for a year. Do you think any of us would have let him if we didn't _know_ that you went over every night too? You took him on vacation with you. The two of you were practically married."

"He wasn't my boyfriend," said Leon woodenly.

Jill looked startled. "But - but you loved each other!"

"Did we?" Leon was surprised to find he'd said it out loud, albeit softly. Did he love D?

Did _D_ love him?

Well, there had to have been some reason that D had pulled him to his feet and taken him, dying as he was, and done . . . whatever it was that he'd done to make Leon survive. There had to have been a reason that he'd shown him that ship, up among the clouds. Or taken Chris in, or even _put up_ with him. But did D love him? Could whatever D was feel anything like love?

No, that was a stupid question. Could whatever D was feel anything like love _for a human_?

Did he, Detective Leon Orcot, love D?

In the split-second it took for this to go through his mind, he heard Jill gasp. "You didn't know," she said. "I'm sorry. You didn't _know_."

To say nothing of the fact that he wasn't gay. Only . . . D's sister had been beautiful and _wrong_. "Don't worry about it," he said.

She drove.

That night, because there was no pet shop to go to, he stayed in instead. He could have gone out but there didn't seem much point. After a while, he called Chris.

Or, well, tried to. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" his aunt asked.

"Nine?"

"Sure, on the West coast. We're three hours ahead. It's _midnight_ here."

"Oh."

"Call again tomorrow if you want to talk to your brother."

"Okay. Sorry." He put down the receiver.

He called again on his lunch break the next day. Chris' school let out at three, so he figured that Chris would be home at three-thirty.

"He's not here right now."

"He isn't? Where is he?"

"Soccer practice."

"Oh. When will he be back?"

"Around five, but don't call until seven. He does have homework to do."

"Okay."

"Leon, is everything okay?"

"Fine," he said, and hung up.

He didn't call again at four that afternoon because at four that afternoon he was in the hospital, having a bullet removed from a rib. He didn't call the next few days because he was recovering.

Leon spent most of the time in thought. It wasn't, he'd be the first to admit, something he was good at - his intuition had always served him before. Now, though . . .

Did he love D? Certainly he missed the man, as infuriating as he could be, missed the childish delight and love of sweets and yes, even that damnable smirk. He missed having someone to go back to, and talk to, even if D's idea of comforting him had been giving him a butterfly and bad dreams. (He wasn't sure how D had done it. It didn't matter, he knew he had.) He missed being dragged out to art shows or street markets. He missed arguing.

Did he love D?

He called again at four one afternoon, listening to his aunt berate him for irresponsibility, until he cut her off with an, "I got shot." Then she was all apologies while he explained that he was going to be fine, and he'd like to talk to Chris now.

"Leon!" said Chris. "I thought you forgot me."

"How could I forget the best little man there is?" teased Leon. "I hear you joined the soccer team."

And, just that quickly, Chris was off on an explanation of all his soccer friends and all his old friends wanting to know what it had been like to live in California (sunny) and stories of his big detective brother. He was, in fact, a chatterbox, as if a year of silence had filled him with enough words for forever. And then he asked, "How's D?"

Leon felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "He's-" fine, he didn't say, because truth was important and D had never told Chris a lie to save his feelings. "-moved," he said instead. "He just packed up and left. I don't know where he went."

"He didn't even say goodbye?"

"No."

"It's very rude not to say goodbye," asserted Chris with all the confidence of an eight-year-old.

"Yeah, I know," said Leon.

"I miss him," said Chris, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "A lot. I mean, I love my family here, but I miss him."

"Me too, kid," said Leon. "Me too."

They talked a little while longer, until Chris had to go. He set down the receiver and then noticed that it had gotten dark. He could go out, but . . .

His dreams were bright, vivid, and faded with the buzzing of his alarm clock. He opened his eyes to see a cheesecake smiling down at him, and his eyes slid shut. It was the wrong smile.

That evening, he took down the posters. His room looked empty without them, but it fit. He felt empty too.

Th next week, he gave up coffee. There really wasn't any point, not when he went to sleep around eight every night, and therefore his body simply stopped sleeping at four, whether he wanted to be awake or not. He took to getting into the office at six. More than one person commented on how punctual and _focused_ he'd become, and how many unsolved cases he was solving. It was easy, anyway, simply finding all the pieces that didn't fit and putting them together the right way. And then going home at night to his empty apartment and eating something and going to sleep.

Jill told him he looked like shit before dragging him out for some real food. It was good real food, in a make-your-eyeballs-sweat kind of way. She didn't ask, which was a small mercy. She did offer to talk to him, when he was ready.

He called Chris again the next day. Chris was happy, Chris was well-adjusted, Chris was perfect. Chris missed D but it wasn't driving him nuts to not be able to talk to the man. Chris said "I love you" before hanging up.

It was still to early to go to sleep, so Leon spent some time cleaning his apartment. Without the mess, it was more Spartan than ever. Nothing like the comfortable clutter of D's shop-

No.

He took to drinking sweet tea while on duty. It tasted nothing like the bitter stuff D had made, and that was all right. Off duty, he still drank beer, but not a lot. He didn't need a lot of mellowing these days, not when half the time he felt like he was just watching his life rather than living in it.

Did he love D? He was sure stereotypes had no place in the void left by elegant robes and fingernails too sharp by far to be only human. D defied stereotypes anyway. He was young and beautiful, and it was fully possible that he'd stay that way forever. He was ancient and weary, and he'd probably remain that way too. He didn't run a pet shop, he made a home for those who came to live with him until they found the place they belonged. He was an ark that carried things long forgotten forward through time.

It took him months, in the end, for the broken clockwork of his life to run down, but inevitably it did.

Before he left, he went to visit Chris, take his younger brother on one last trip. They visited the zoo, and the aquarium, and went to see a movie together. As he drove Chris home late that night, Chris said to him, "Tell D I said hi." He also said, "I love you," right before Leon walked out the door for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> The laundry machine is broken. It is not being fixed until Thursday. -_-
> 
> On the plus side, there's a the-child-has-turned-three-it-is-time-for-his-first-haircut celebration tomorrow.


End file.
